


Ashes

by StAnni



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heroes to Villains, Post-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 17:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16538834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: His heart is big and fraught with vulnerabilities and it scares her, how selfless and exposed he allows himself to be, how he does not comprehend the concept of self-preservation, even after the war.  She says yes because it is him, and it is her, and there is only one side with him in the world, and that is next to him.





	Ashes

She is fourteen, or there abouts, and the world is hard and small. And when she meets him, the worlds get even smaller it narrows down and in time the world is just him, his idealism, his demons, his agony and eventually his heart-breaking ultimatums.

Their first time is during the black out, years later, in a time of only fear and darkness. She had fled the island after Alfred was taken, when it got overrun with rioters and she had found Bruce, alone, holed up in a drainage tunnel – a crude map of the post-apocalyptic Gotham scratched on the wall. They were so young then, barely twenty years on the planet and already war-weary. She was still struggling, still in pain, but they were together, finally. He kissed her eyes, and her cheeks and her neck, and covered her mouth with his own, breathing raggedly when her moans became too loud. In that broken world they have a love story.

She is twenty one, or at least, he is twenty one, and a new world is slowly rising from the ashes, being rebuilt – like them. 

He asks her to live with him in one of the apartment buildings the Wayne Corporation has woken from the dead on the outskirts of the Narrows. 

His heart is big and fraught with vulnerabilities and it scares her, how selfless and exposed he allows himself to be, how he does not comprehend the concept of self-preservation, even after the war. She says yes because it is him, and it is her, and there is only one side with him in the world, and that is next to him. 

On their first night in the apartment he watches the ruined city through the dirty windows. Cranes jut out over the horizon – the Wayne Corporation is doing what it can to breathe life into the bones of Gotham. “We have to fix it.” He says. His suit stretches tight over his back as he leans against the glass – the muscles pronounced. He is big, imposing but when he talks about Gotham he is the thirteen year old boy she remembers.

What she fears, what she will never tell him, is that their eyes do not see the same city. Bruce, against his innate fear of abandonment, wants to gather everyone in, wants to consolidate, create a city free from fault lines, walls, divisions. Selina, a product of a world outside of Bruce’s knows that his vision, however noble, is impossible, unwittingly selfish even.

“Maybe, Bruce.” Is all she can say, feeling his shoulders stiffen underneath her touch. 

On their first night in their apartment they are twenty one, veterans and tired to their bones. She reaches for his hand in the dark and he hesitates, “It’s not going to work if we’re not together.” he says quietly.   
She sighs and rolls towards him, her forehead to his chin, and he gathers her in. “One night without worries, Bruce. Just give yourself one night.” 

To their benefit they try, both of them, to play house. And when it is just them, when it relies on just the familiarity between them – Bruce and Selina – it works.   
There are moments of pure happiness, of hope, she didn’t know possible. He falls asleep on the couch they dragged in from the street, his head on her lap as she listens to the construction ever continuing outside – dust rising and settling in the air. With her fingers in his hair she dozes off herself while she tells him, quietly “It could be like this, Bruce.”

But there are darker days too, days that are harder and longer than the rest.   
A newly built residential block disappears in a plume of hot smoke – explosions like pox flaring all over the city.   
As Selina feared not everyone takes kindly to the new dispensation, the Wayne Corporation tearing down tent cities to build high rise, low cost living quarters for the poor. Not everyone wants to live in the new shiny world Bruce has envisioned. 

Enemies crawl from the sewers, from the tunnels and from the pits beneath Gotham and Bruce is drawn back into that dark current and it takes everything, every ounce of her being, to keep her head above water.

The swell of violence beyond their home eventually, inevitably, bleeds through the walls, through the cracks of their manufactured happiness and their disagreement again turn into arguments, again turn into cruelty. “Why the hell are you even here, Selina? Whose side are you on?” And she strike back, her frustration boiling over “You don’t care about Gotham because you don’t care to understand Gotham, Bruce! What makes you better to these people than any Penguin, any Valcone!?” 

Because they are older, because years of war has worn at their defences, things are harder to forgive. He leaves the apartment while she is out the next day. There is no note and no goodbye and if she thought her heart had been broken before, nothing compares to being left behind, like trash, by the only person she has ever loved.  
After three days of no sign of him, she leaves too, smashing the hall mirror with her bare fist before she slams the door.

When she is, probably, twenty four and he is twenty four, he locks the door of the ladies room of the fancy restaurant they both happen to be at – herself as a waitress and Bruce as a patron. He lifts her up on the basin and he kisses her like he is starved for her.   
She doesn’t know who Bruce came with but imagines some lawyer, ballerina, brain surgeon glancing at the empty chair in front of her with growing irritation.   
He unbuckles his belt and grips her by the hips, pulling her close – her brain floods with memories of every time, the first time, the times between, the last time, and she drowns in the intimacy.  
As he pushes inside of her, close and breathing hard, he whispers to her, low and gravelly, how much he misses her, loves her, will always love her, will always, always love her.  
He leaves before she does and when she walks out Bruce has sat down with his ballerina-brain-surgeon-lawyer and smiles, a friendly, reassuring smile before he takes her hand across the table.

A year later, still haunted by his words, she goes to him. She goes his manor, also rebuilt – scrubbed clean from past memories, from them. It is his birthday and she wants to see him. Alfred finds her in the kitchen, setting his gift down on the table – a letter, an apology, calling for a truce. “You shouldn’t be here, Ms Kyle.” and not a second later Bruce enters, the ballerina-brain-surgeon-lawyer in tow. Bruce looks so surprised to see her, shocked even, perhaps even embarrassed and her heart is a small bird fluttering painfully inside her chest, gasping for breath. “Selina…”  
But she leaves before he can say anything else, grabbing her letter in crumpled fist.

The next time they meet is several months later – and he is helping the GCPD track her down. She has become somewhat of a notorious figure in Gotham, a prolific explosive expert and a leader in her own right of a seedy slice of the New Narrows. She leads his chase by the nose up the roof of a Wayne high rise and before she makes the jump he is able to grab her ankle, slam her to the concrete and force her down – his body heavy on top of hers. Above them the GCPD hovers like a black wasp, chopper in the air.  
“Stop, Selina! You have to stop!”  
But she can’t stop. She will burn every building down in Gotham if it means he will chase her, he will see her.  
She grabs him by the neck and kisses him – biting his bottom lip so hard that she draws blood. His suit is sturdy but she can feel him hard against her thigh.  
He yanks her head back and it cracks against the concrete – for a moment she even thinks that regret flashes momentarily in his eyes.  
The blood from his lip is on her tongue and the metallic taste of it makes her feel, just feel, for the first time in a long time.  
He doesn’t let go and she breathes out, her eyes on his – considering every escape possible.  
“The building’s gonna blow, Bruce. You want to go up in flames with it, be my guest.”  
He doesn’t trust her, she can see it, but he can’t take the chance. She knows he needs to let Gordon know – they need to clear blocks.  
He pushes off of her roughly and indicates to Gordon in the chopper whirring above them.  
She takes the opportunity to jump.

It’s a long fall - love. And you never land anywhere safe. You pummel in a heap, a broken mess, and you try to get up – to move. 

She manages to roll to cover before the building goes down and before she covers her face she can see Bruce on the drop rope from the chopper.

She reads about his engagement on a scrap of paper from the city. Her name is Rachel, his ballerina-brain-surgeon-lawyer, and he calls her the love of his life. 

Six explosions later and after so many months that she has lost count, Wayne Corporation abandons the New Narrows – the losses to great to sustain. The GCPD pulls out and barricades the borders. In the kingdom of filth, thieves and killers, she is the queen.

It’s not a surprise to see him waiting for her in the darkness of her apartment. It is, however, a surprise to see him out of the suit. She wonders how he even made it to the far corner of the New Narrows, dressed as himself, the most sought after mark of Gotham. His eyes are dark and his voice is even.  
“You win. Are you happy?”  
She doesn’t answer. It’s a vicious question and he knows it.

She pulls off her mask and draws the zipper of her suit down her back “Are you staying?” 

Time passed and scar tissue has formed thick over old wounds, but it still hurts when he turns away from her.

“Goodbye Selina.”


End file.
